For the third season in a row, the Michigan men's basketball is relying on upperclassmen bigs, transferring into Ann Arbor to grow as players while providing size and stability around the rim.
To say that strategy has payed off for the Wolverines would be a real understatement.
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If you count Yaxel Lendeborg as a big man, Michigan has sent all five starting bigs from the last two seasons — Danny Wolf, Vlad Goldin, Lendeborg, Morez Johnson Jr. and Aday Mara — to the NBA. Michigan reloaded in the front court this offseason, adding JP Estrella from Tennessee, Moustapha Thiam from Cincinnati and Jalen Reed from LSU.
"We're still pretty strong in the frontcourt," head coach Mike Boynton said in Chicago at Big Ten Media Day. "I think probably the reason that we're probably perceived as not being as strong, we're not as strong, we don't have to rely on it, let's say that."
Michigan has developed all of those bigs in their short Ann Arbor tenures, bringing out the best parts of their games while unlocking new layers.
That's still the plan for the new bigs, with Boynton saying that Estrella and Thiam will be asked to do more from beyond the arc.
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"I think most importantly for them, it's a part of the player development aspect of our program, where we want to add something to a player's game that they haven't unlocked before," Boynton said. "But it's also very critical for them to unlock those skills to get our team to function, because we do need space for Elliot to be able to penetrate, a guy like Roddy to get downhill, so if you got two guys in there that don't shoot well, it makes it pretty difficult, and they both shoot pretty well. They'll probably shoot more threes each individually than they've shot before, and that will be good for us."
Boynton sure made Estrella and Thiam sound like players Michigan fans are fond of when describing them to the media earlier this week.
"JP is like the brute force, physical guy, in the similar mold to Morez," Boynton said. "He's one of the best offensive rebounders in the country, he was one last year, that will continue, but the evolution of his game, we play a lot different stylistically than he's played the last three years, so playing on the perimeter more, being in more playmaker situations and shooting more threes honestly, is something that he's worked on this summer.
"It's been a challenge for him," Boynton continued. "You play a certain way for so long, it's hard to change, but he's worked really hard at it. Our staff has worked on film and spent some individual time with him and he's taking the challenge on."
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When it comes to Estrella's running mate, Boynton says that Thiam is a blend of the NBA bigs that Michigan has previously developed.
"And Mousthapa, of the five guys we've had over the last few years that have made the NBA, all the big we've had, he's sort of a combination in ways of all of them," Boynton said. "He's a rim protector in the mold of Aday, but he moves laterally a little better, he runs faster. He's got Danny's playmaking ability in terms of being able to push it on the break, he's a little bigger than Danny, a little bit more athletic. He can shoot the ball, not quite as well as Yax but he can make threes in stand-still, catch-and-shoot situations, and he can finish around the rim like Vlad did."
While he's expected to be on a minutes restriction for Sunday's exhibition game against Eastern Michigan as he finishes up recovery from am Achilles injury, Boynton said that he thinks that Reed is also going to catch people off guard.
"I think he's going to be better than people think because he hasn't played," Boynton said of Reed. "But we see it in practice, he's pretty good. He may surprise people, in terms of what he's able to do coming off of an injury."
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While he did reference previous Michigan bigs a lot, Boynton reiterated that he wants these new big men to carve out their own roles for themselves.
"JP and Moustapha aren't defending a national championship," Boynton said after listing the returning players from the title team. "I think the mindset has to be, how does this team create it's own legacy? To a certain degree, our jobs are to at some point — and that will never happen because that team was so historically great — to get people talking less about last year's team and talk more about what this year's team is actually accomplishing."
It's natural to compare Estrella and Thiam to a few of the bigs that are now on NBA teams, but Boynton wants both guys to focus on themselves.
"I don't want Moustapha and JP to think that they have to be like Morez (Johnson) and Aday (Mara)," Boynton said. "I want them to think that they want to do what Morez and Aday did, which is get people to stop talking about Danny (Wolf) and Vlad (Goldin). Morez and Aday had to get people to stop talking about Danny and Vlad and now Moustapha and JP have to get people to start talking about them because of how they are playing now
. I think if we have that approach, they are good enough to create their own legacy."
